composition. Helioseismology Helioseismology is the study of the wave oscillations in the Sun. Changes in the propagation of these waves through the Sun reveal inner structures and allow astrophysicists to develop extremely detailed profiles of the interior conditions of the Sun. In particular, the location of the convection zone in the outer layers of the Sun can be measured, and information about the core of the Sun provides a method, using the SSM, to calculate the age of the Sun, independently of the method of inferring the age of the Sun from that of the oldest meteorites. This is another example of how the SSM can be refined. Neutrino production Hydrogen is fused into helium through several different interactions in the Sun. The vast majority of neutrinos are produced through the pp chain, a process in which four protons are combined to produce two protons, two neutrons, two positrons, and two electron neutrinos. Neutrinos are also produced by the CNO cycle, but that process is considerably less important in the Sun than in other stars. Most of the neutrinos produced in the Sun come from the first step of the pp chain but their energy is so low (<0.425 MeV) they are very difficult to detect. A rare side branch of the pp chain produces the "boron-8" neutrinos with a maximum energy of roughly 15 MeV, and these are the easiest neutrinos to detect. A very rare interaction in the pp chain produces the "hep" neutrinos, the highest energy neutrinos predicted to be produced by the Sun. They are predicted to have a maximum energy of about 18 MeV. All of the interactions described above produce neutrinos with a spectrum of energies. The electron capture of 7Be produces neutrinos at either roughly 0.862 MeV (~90%) or 0.384 MeV (~10%). Neutrino detection The weakness of the neutrino's interactions with other particles means that most neutrinos produced in the core of the Sun can pass all the way through the Sun without being absorbed. It is possible, therefore, to observe the core of the Sun directly by detecting these neutrinos. History The first experiment to successfully detect cosmic neutrinos was Ray Davis's chlorine experiment, in which neutrinos were detected by observing the conversion of chlorine nuclei to radioactive argon in a large tank of perchloroethylene. This was a reaction channel expected for neutrinos, but since only the number of argon decays was